Ok yeah... I'm going to try uninstalling gnome3, it's obviously not agreeing with my system...

as I understand it, Unity is a session that you can chose from when you log in.

I wasn't in love with "Netbook remix" (which looks a lot like Unity to me) when i installed Lucid so I just picked Gnome as the session I logged into.

you shouldn't install anything until you get used to linux...most of everything you need is already there, frankly

(aside from GIMP, of course)

Except that Unity wasn't functioning properly. It didn't let me change any desktop settings, it freezed up once in a while (didn't come back from screensaver mode) stuff like that.

So I read up a bit about it, found out that these were flaws in Unity, because it's a new UI... so I decided to try installing GNOME3 instead.

So what happened was that GNOME3 royally screwed up my whole installation. Installing GNOME3 seems to have overwritten/removed all traces of the Unity UI from the system, and there's no way to get them back. I removed GNOME3, didn't help. Now it seems there's no way to fix the system except reinstalling from scratch.

Luckily, I found this tool that can read linux files from Windows, so I can backup any important files from the Linux side onto the Windows side.

If I didn't have Windows installed I'd be out of luck, since my Ubuntu doesn't seem to recognize CD, USB etc. anymore...

So here's a tip to anyone who's interested in trying Ubuntu: don't make it your only OS, have a Windows installation for backup just for when things go really crappy...

I'm too lazy to check which version you installed

the reason I have Ubuntu 10.04 is because it's supposed to be stable and "LTS" which I believe means 'Long term Support'

If you are new to linux or just need a stable system go for the stable number first.

Ok... can I just replace the current 11.04 installation with the 10.04?

hmm, I'm not sure about that.

I clean install is always the best.
let me ask my friends at http://openubuntu.com

off the top of my head I think if you boot from the 10.04 live cd there is a REinstall feature.

I hope...........

not sure if you may easily downgrade

but if you had bad luck with Gnome you may try KDE , XCF or even .

at least for KDE is possible just add the desktop as option (at loading time...will be equivalent to start Ubuntu or Kubuntu )
not sure is also Xfce4 (xubuntu http://www.xubuntu.org ) and LXDE( lubuntu http://lubuntu.net/ ) may be installed as additional deskop

i am fine with kde (Kubuntu ) as far for Gnome i like the name much less the graphic i prefer last kde

something to pay attention to is where your linux partition is at the moment

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1673963

Well I don't think I have a separate home partition (which I only learned I should make after installing...) so I think there should only be the XP, Linux & Swap partitions.

Now I'll just need to download the 10.04 installation cd...

Thanks for the help, everyone.

I don't either, but you can easily save your GIMP files if you added any scripts/plugins and so on.